Today my heart is heavy as I share with you the story of a dear friend

One of David’s closest friends from University

An incredibly brave and beautiful friend

A brave and beautiful mummy

This is the story of Lily

Told by her mummy, Helen Beesly

When you light your candles for the Wave of Light this Wednesday

Please hold Helen and Lily in your hearts too

The sky is too full of angels today, tonight too full of stars

Lily was a much wanted pregnancy. We already have Tom, our crazy two year old and we wanted to complete our family with a second child.

My pregnancy was ticking along like normal. 12 week scan, 16 week appt, everything was fine. But I felt something wasn’t right. I couldn’t find a heartbeat with my Doppler, but convinced myself it was my anterior placenta acting like a sound cushion, movements felt very weak and muffled, barely there even. By the time my anomaly scan came round at 21 weeks I was desperate for reassurance.

The moment the sonographer said she was fetching a colleague I felt waves crashing in my head. When they both confirmed there was no heartbeat I felt like was going under those waves and gasping for air.

Time with the consultant revealed that Lily looked she had died at about 15 weeks but my body hadn’t realised. My body was so desperate to remain pregnant that I had carried my dead daughter for 5 weeks with no clue anything was wrong.

They gave me a pill to stop the placenta working, to trigger the right hormones to release the pregnancy and I was booked in for induction. I never made it to induction. Instead I ended up giving birth to my tiny daughter very much alone in my downstairs loo while my husband and toddler slept upstairs. Alone quickly became surrounded as I lay in a growing pool of blood on my kitchen floor with 3 paramedics and all the ensuing drama.

I miss my daughter every moment of every day. I grieve for her potential, for what she may have been. I grieve for how much her big brother would have loved her. I grieve for the fact I never got to meet her, even though I feel like I knew her.

I grieve for this lost year, for all the feelings of excitement and joy I have been cheated out of and I grieve for the fact that any future pregnancy will not be a joyous celebratory time but one of terror, guilt and worry.

I wish I had the strength to support a cause or champion others, but all my strength goes into getting on with each day. To acting normal in the hope it will all soon feel normal and I won’t feel such an ache in my heart where I carry my daughter.

For now that will have to do.

I love you Lily with all my heart and soul and you will remain with me always.